A Slow Dark Road into the Black
by snowdarkred
Summary: K/Mc. No matter how far they pushed and stretched, their star never appeared before them with the same beautiful burst that it had held before, because now, in the space of a day, the universe had changed—forever. Post-Narada.


Title: A Slow Dark Road into the Black

Author: snowdarkred

Words: 2269

Warnings: dark themes

Author's Note: This was written for **thalassa_ipx**, who requested post-Narada angst-cuddle fic in exchange for the awesome banner she made me for my bi-weekly Inspiration posts on the kirk_mccoy comm. I think I got the angst part down... And hey look! I actually wrote something that takes place in canon!

* * *

A Slow Dark Road into the Black

They floated in the darkness, waiting for their ship to carry them home. She was theirs now, a slow moving light shining against the gasping blankness of it all. They floated in the darkness with their ship, surrounded by shadows, longing for the twinkle of their very own star. Longing for home and sweethearts and lazy Sunday mornings spent in bed.

But no matter how far they pushed and stretched, their star never appeared before them with the same beautiful burst that it had held before, because now, in the space of a day, the universe had changed—forever.

----

McCoy took one last sweeping look at what was let of sickbay before declaring himself off duty. The weight of too many deaths, too many lost ones, pressed down on his shoulders, causing them to buckle under the pressure. Each lost patient had fallen into his memory like a stone dropped into standing water, soft ripples wearing at the edges of his self control. He had started to fray long before now, but he knew that if he stayed on for even one more moment, no matter how much he might feel loath to leave his people and patients, he would snap like a rope pulled too tight.

Part of being a doctor was knowing just how far you could go before your tether slipped and you fell into the water after your patients.

He nodded at Chapel as he left, making a note of her firm smile and even gait. She was a tough one and should they give him his own sickbay after this mess was over, he was taking her with him. She had remained professional throughout the chaos, as the universe when to shit and Jim went careening off into the black, pulling them all with him by sheer force of gravity.

Jim.

McCoy felt his chest tighten as fresh adrenaline pushed at his awareness. As far as he knew, Jim had never shown up to get checked out after returning from the Romulan ship.

"Shit," he muttered, returning to sickbay and stalking over to one off the few working consoles left. Some engineering chick had been up here earlier, repairing what she could; McCoy was pretty sure that the Orion was one of Jim's girls, but it hardly seem to matter at the moment. They were barely grasping at sanity with their fingernails as it was. Stupid bouts of jealousy would have to wait until they had the solid mass of Earth beneath their feet and McCoy could see the sun glinting through Jim's hair.

McCoy jabbed the computer with slightly more force than was strictly necessary, but it wasn't going to report his abuse, so what did he care? His instincts were going haywire, and his tired brain couldn't even gather enough coherency to scold himself properly.

"Computer, locate Acting Captain Jim Kirk," he ordered the machine. His voice was almost unrecognizable, dense and hoarse with dreariness rather than smooth and strong with attitude and Southern charm. His own daughter wouldn't recognize him if she heard him speak thus.

"Cadet Jim Kirk is not assigned to the _USS Enterprise_," the computer answered after a brief pause. McCoy blinked. Apparently someone forgot to add Jim to the roster. Considering that the same people who would have made the change were currently busy keeping the ship from falling apart around them, McCoy's willing to let it go—as soon as he finds Kirk, that is.

Then, curiosity. "Computer, identify what ship Cadet Kirk is assigned to," he said. He was grateful for the drugged silence of delta shift when the computer announced the information. Everyone in the room besides Chapel was unconscious, and Chapel was too professional to say anything about her boss's abrupt escalation into swearing like the good ol' boy that he was.

The _USS Republic_ had been blown away like the rest of the cadet-manned ships at the Battle of Vulcan. Jim had been _this_ close to dying in the blackness of space, of being destroyed within its inky cavern like his father, the famous George Kirk. At least McCoy wouldn't have had to suffer with the knowledge of Kirk's death for long in that possibility because the Enterprise would have soon joined the rest of the 'Fleet had Kirk not been there to put the pieces together.

_'How many things might have been different if Jim hadn't acted the way he did?'_ McCoy thought. And then he thought, _'How would I have survived without him?'_

He wouldn't have.

"Computer, locate the Captain's quarters," McCoy ordered. Jim hadn't sought him out, which meant one of two things. Either he was grievously hurt and hiding, or he was too tired to move and hiding. Neither one was good. The console spat out a location—finally—and McCoy contented himself to a brisk walk down the corridors to Jim's most probable location.

The bulkheads were riddled in gaping holes and covered in soot and burn marks; McCoy could see through parts of the dull metal to the very guts of the ship. Everything had taken damage, either in the battle or in the frantic, impossible escape from the black hole. A few crew members passed him in the corridor, but most people were on duty or passed out. They had lost maybe a fourth of their crew in the space of day, not to mention the destruction of a planet and half of the 'Fleet.

The halls felt dead. They were almost completely empty, and McCoy shuttered to think of how vibrant and full they had been just a few hours ago. Chasing Jim through the corridors had given him an idea of just how many cadets and junior officers had been packed aboard. Had.

The Captain's door looked like every other door, and it slid open without resistance when he pressed the medical override code into the keypad. Darkness yawned before him, just as silent and unfeeling as the vacuum just outside the hull.

No, wait. He could hear Jim breathing.

The soft sound flitted about the room, making it hard to pinpoint the source. McCoy stepped into the room and let the door close behind him. The breathing shuttered for a moment, and McCoy's heart nearly froze in that long pause, but then the silence was broken by Jim's voice, harsher than McCoy had ever heard it before, even after all night partying and lingering hangovers.

"Bones?" Jim asked. "Is that you?"

McCoy traced the path of the sound waves before replying, his eyes struggling to make out shapes in the pitch black. "Yeah, it's me. Are you alright?"

The answering laugh cut through the air in jagged shards, and this time his heart really did freeze because he had never heard Jim sound so broken. The laugh—if you could call it a laugh—was hard, cynical, and maybe a little desperate, and it made McCoy's stomach twist in concern and horror. Jesus, why hadn't he checked on Jim sooner? Why hadn't _anyone_ checked on him?

"Alright? Nothing will ever be alright, 'cause nothing was alright to begin with, 'cause the whole universe was fucked from before this shit even started."

McCoy walked carefully towards where he heard Jim's voice. His knees collided with the hard frame of the bed, and he stopped to listen. In the darkness, it felt as if he could hear Jim's heart beat along with his own, that he could feel it against his chest and down to his marrow. His bones. The room felt surreal, and McCoy was vividly aware that the man who was supposed to be in these quarters, the man who was supposed to be their leader and protector, was dozing in a drugged haze three decks below in sickbay.

"Jim?"

"I didn't want to know," Jim said, and here his voice cracked, fizzing into a static whisper that buzzed against McCoy's skin. "I didn't need that, I don't. I—I can't stop—it won't turn off."

Fear gripped him. Jim wasn't making any sense. That wasn't a good sign, definitely not a good sign.

"What won't turn off, Jim?" he asked. He climbed onto the bed and felt around until his hands connected with a warm body. He laid down until that body was aligned with his own, until they fit perfectly together, alone in a pitch black room only filled with the sound of their breathing and the tempo of their heartbeats. "Jim?"

Hands fumbled in the dark, and McCoy felt calloused fingers brush against his jaw. They moved upwards, feeling the shape of his features until they fell easily into a set position. McCoy felt Jim's hand freeze on the left side of his face, felt his muscles go rigid with tension as he pressed against McCoy's skin.

"I didn't want this," Jim whispered again. McCoy's mind reeled to catch up, to put the pieces together in some way that made sense. Jim put more force behind his touch, and McCoy let his head tilt backwards without resistance. "I-I can't _think_—it isn't _me_—why can't—it won't _leave me_—_goddamn_ Vulcans—_my head hurts_."

Intuition flashed. Head? Jim's head hurt, and he was muttering about not wanting something, not being able to turn it off. McCoy knew something of Vulcan physiology, though not a lot, and one of the things that had been mentioned in those stupid Starfleet classes was the special nerve endings in a Vulcan's hands. And how they connect with the mind. There was even some speculation over just what exactly Vulcans were capable with those connections and nerves, what they could do with their mindmelds.

There were only a few Vulcans aboard the Enterprise, and the only one that had regular contact with Jim was Spock.

"Jim," McCoy said slowly. "Did anything weird happen between you and any of those pointy-eared bas—Vucans?"

Jim laughed again, just as torn and disjointed as the last one. "Weird? What counts as weird now? An angry future Romulan destroyed my home planet."

McCoy's lungs deflated in...not shock, not despair. Horror, maybe. They had talked about this in class, when the unit on telepathic races had come up. Messing with people's heads could only lead to disaster. "Jim, you—Vulcan isn't—wasn't your home planet."

Jim's breath caught, and then he heaved it all out in a sigh that snarled up into a sob. McCoy wished that he could turn the lights on, just to make sure. He wasn't sure what he wanted to make sure _of_ though. Make sure he wasn't bleeding, make sure he was all there? Make sure that he was still the Jim he knew? But if he turned the lights on, if he called out for the computer to charge the lighting crystals and illuminate the room, it could shatter everything. Any illusion would break and whatever was wrong would be exposed to the bright glare of the artificial lights. There would be no going back. No pretending.

"I know. I know, I goddamn _know_, I know I know I know. I can _remember_—both, his and mine, but it's not mine, Bones. It's not mine, and I don't want it."

That made almost no sense, but McCoy held his tongue. Jim's hand pressed harder, enough that a dull ache was beginning to form at the points of contact. McCoy made a small grunt of protest and then immediately wanted to take it back, but Jim had already jerked away. He shifted out of McCoy's grasp and disappeared into the darkness. Only the sound of a stiffed sob told McCoy where his Jim was.

"What is it? What are you experiencing?" McCoy asked. Maybe if Jim talked about it—

"I don't want to _talk_ about it."

Well, tough nuts. McCoy wasn't about to lose his best friend and love interest to some alien mindfuck, and that was exactly what would happen if McCoy let Jim slip away now. He got up from the bed and let the sound lead him to Jim's side. He collected his friend in his arms and sat with him as he began to shake against him. They fit together like two puzzle pieces left over from the masterpiece, not quite right but perfect at the same time, in their own way.

"Tell me about it," he said more forcefully, and Jim just nodded against the curve of his neck and started talking.

"It was me, but it's not _me_, it's the other me. The one from the life that Nero took away. He changed everything, I know that now. I know what path my life was supposed to travel and what choices I _should have made_ but _didn't_, and how fucked up this whole thing is. I don't want this, I don't—I'm not him, I'll never _be_ him."

McCoy held Jim as he babbled about changed lives and the past that wasn't and the future that won't and how everything was messed up and fucked up. He held Jim and wondered if the universe was always going to be such an impossible place, where time-traveling Romulans and Vulcans ruined lives and minds. The dark room surrounded them like the cold hand of space, and McCoy listened to Jim's words bleed together and eventually fade into the heavy silence of the Captain's quarters.

----

But no matter how far they pushed and stretched, their star never appeared before them with the same beautiful burst that it had held before, because now, in the space of a day, the universe had changed—forever.

* * *

Leave a comment and tell me what you think! I don't bite...unless you want me to. ;)


End file.
